We have seen how the prayer begins with contemplation, and then passes into supplication.  Thus all prayer should end as it began.  It has a circular motion, and starting from the highest heavens and coming down to earth, is thither drawn again and rests at the throne of God, whence it set out, like the strong Spirits before His throne who veil their faces while they gaze upon the glory, and then fly forth to help human sorrows and satisfy human hearts, and then on unwearied pinions winging their way to their first station, meekly sink their wings of flight, and veil their faces again with their wings.  The rivers that flow through broad lands, bringing blessing and doing humble service in drinking-cup and domestic vessel, came in soft rain from heaven, and though their bright waves are browned with soil and made opaque with many a stain, yet their work done, they rest in the great ocean, and thence are drawn up once more to the clouds of heaven.  So with our prayers; they ought to start from the contemplation of our God, and they ought to return thither again.

And as this is the last word of our prayers, so may we not say that it represents the perpetual form of fellowship with God?  Prayers for bread, and pardon, and help, and deliverance, are for the wilderness.  Prayers for the hallowing of His name, and the coming of His kingdom, and the doing of His will, are out of date when they are fulfilled; but for ever this voice shall rise before His throne, and that last new song, which shall ring with might as of thunder and sweetness as of many harps from the thousand times ten thousand, shall be but the expansion and the deepening of the praise of earth.  Then ’every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth and in the sea, shall be heard saying, “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."’

So we finish these meditations.  I have felt all along how poorly my words served me to say even what I saw, and how poorly my vision saw into the clear depths of the divine prayer.  But I hope that they may have helped you half as much as they have myself, to feel more strongly how all-comprehensive it is.  I said at the beginning, and I repeat with more emphasis now, that there is everything in this prayer—­God’s relations to man, man’s to God and his fellows, the foundation stones of Christian theology, of Christian morals, of Christian society, of Christian politics.  There is help for the smallest wants and light for daily duties; there is strength for the hour of death and the day of judgment.  There is the revelation of the timeless depths of our Father’s heart; there is the prophecy of the furthest future for ourselves and our brethren.  No man can exhaust it.  Every age may find in its simple syllables lessons for their new perplexities and duties.  It will not be outgrown in heaven.  But, thank God, we do not need to exhaust its meaning in order to use